Sudhendra Vahl, the first chapter Options

[minque]

This is the first chapter of the amazing story by OverrideB1, which has been posted in the ES-forums

So you want to know a little more about me, where I come from, how I got to be where I am? That seems a reasonable request and we should have plenty of time for me to tell my tale.
I go by the name of Sudhendra Vahl. That’s not my real name of course, but you’ll soon understand why. I’ll start at the beginning ~ I was raised in a small village about fifty miles west of Rihad, and I was born in the year 401 of the Third Era. What’s that?
Well, that is uncommonly kind of you to say so, although your flattery will gain you nothing. I come from a long-lived species and certain events (which I will relate) have conspired to provide me with a much longer life than is normal ~ even for one of my kind. Now, let me tell you my tale…

The Tale of Sudhendra Vahl :Prologue
I never knew my parents: my mother died giving birth to me and my father, from what I can discover, was an itinerant adventurer passing through on his way to somewhere adventurous from somewhere less adventurous. My mother, Gods rest her soul, caught his eye and there was a brief dalliance. Nine months later, along I came ~ a very short time after that, my mother departed this vale of tears. I have little, or no, recollection of what happened after that ~ although I have expended considerable resources over the years finding out.

Shortly after my mother’s death, I was taken in by the Stendarr temple and, from there, sent to foster parents to be raised. My foster-parents were Stendarrites, although the milk of his mercy ran thinly in their veins. I was just a source of income from the Temple for them and, when that ran out shortly after my tenth birthday, I became cheap labour for them around the farm. Well, I say cheap ~ unpaid would be a much better description. True, I had food and a bed: the food left over after they’d finished eating and a pile of straw atop the storage shed. It was a brief and unhappy childhood; not helped by the fact I was the only Dark Elf in the village.

I grew up being handy with my fists and feet and wasn’t above using my teeth if push came to shove. And when half-a-dozen jeering children, all of whom are better fed and stronger than you, surround you; shove comes surprisingly quickly. I quickly garnered a reputation as a surly and aggressive child among the villagers. Not that I had much of a problem with that: my foster-parents did, however and I was regularly beaten for “starting another fight”. Any attempt to explain that I’d been set upon by six or seven older, stronger children was conveniently ignored.

However, just so you don’t think that it was completely bad, I did have a wonderful forest near the house and, when my foster-parents were away at temple, I could wander through them to my hearts content. It was about this time that I developed quite the interest in the properties of various flora. I soon found a root, common in the woods, the juice of which alleviated the sting of my frequent bruises. I never made much of the interest other than secretly trading useful bits of root and flower to passing traders in exchange for coin or, more frequently, a tattered old book. I took great care not to be seen with the books as I struggled to learn my letters ~ I knew that they’d end up on the fire and I’d end up being punished again if I was caught.

It was probably around my twelfth year that my Talent appeared. I began to notice strange auras around certain things and the feeling that I almost knew what they were for. As the days passed, I began to notice more of these quicksilver flashes and occasionally, when a Noble or Knight rode through the village, a strange tugging sensation if they passed close to me. Obviously not something I could discuss with my foster-parents, I chose to discuss it with a wandering peddler I’d dealt with before. In exchange for some plants and one of my miserly horded golden Drakes, he explained that I was born under the sign of the Apprentice and that what I was seeing was a manifestation of that astrological sign’s influence on my life.

Over the next three years, my friend the peddler would come visit. In return for my identifying magical items, he taught me a couple of useful cantrips. A fire-touch spell, a spell that allowed me to walk on water, and (my personal favourite) a spirit I could summon that would act as a guardian. In secret, I began marking the fifteenth of Sun’s Height as my birthday.

I said that it was a short and bitter childhood, and the truth of that became apparent shortly after my fifteenth “birthday”. My foster-mother was away visiting her mother ~ a woman I’d never met, but who was reputed to be insanely rich and insanely eccentric. One night, deep in his cups, my foster-father came up into the loft of the storage shed and attempted to… well, I probably don’t need to draw you a diagram, do I? Needless to say, he got a fist in the face that broke his nose and a shovel across that back of the head that turned out his lights for a while. Gathering my few tattered clothes and the meagre stash of Drakes I’d accumulated, I took a sack-full of provender from the larder, the best horse from the yard and, bidding a farewell to my hidden books, I set off in the general direction of away.

I figured that everyone would think I’d headed towards Rihad so that was the last direction I wanted. North lay Taneth and, beyond that, the wilds of Hammerfell. East lay the border with Cyrodiil, as it would if I headed south. Cyrodiil it was then and, angling roughly southeast, I rode off into the night. A few days later, hungry and dusty, I crossed into Sutch. There it became obvious that the supply of coin I had wouldn’t last too long and so, with some reluctance, I sold my steed and blended into the crowds.
Over the course of the next ten years I drifted from town to town, never staying in one spot for long, making a passable living identifying useful plants or identifying ensorcelled items. Naturally, I picked up a few useful skills along the way: my years of chopping wood proved to be handy as I found I could wield a pretty mean axe and I taught myself the rudiments of fighting with a long-blade. I won’t say I led a blameless existence, but I was no more of a thief, cutpurse, or mugger than anyone else of my station. Truth be told, I tried to avoid stealing things except when needs must: often I was the only Dark Elf in the town and knew that suspicion would fall on me pretty quickly.

So I drifted along, wandering from town to town with nary a care in the world. However, it was in one town that I happened to overhear a couple of Legion types asking about a Dark Elf named “Mishkin” who was wanted for assault and theft in Hammerfell. Heart pounding, I ran back to my hideout, collected my sparse belongings and got out of town pretty damn’ sharply, I can tell you. In a panic, I made the cardinal mistake – isolating myself with no options. I hit Anvil running, and booked myself passage on the first ship to very far away from here. It virtually emptied my purse, but I got passage on a vessel sailing to a port near Rimmen. I knew nothing about the place except that it was in Elsweyr and it was very far away from Hammerfell. Sounded perfect.

The journey took a couple of months, and I was more than happy to step off the boat in the bustling port and blend once more into the crowds. Of course, I’d forgotten how quickly bad news could spread, how persistent the Empire is in punishing wrongdoers, and the spitefulness of my foster-parents. I’d travelled under the name of “Vahl” and used the first name “Sudhendra” if I had to ~ it was a name I’d read in a book at sometime and it struck me as being a pretty name, certainly better than Mishkin. There I was, in a foreign place, with no money and a false identity. That’s when I made cardinal mistake number two.

My only excuse is that I was exhausted. I’d been running around trying to gather up some much needed coin and had pushed myself over the limit. I purchased a little bread and meat and sat in a pretty little park to eat my meal. Next thing I know, I’m being shaken awake by a burly guard who was being watched with some amusement by his three equally burly compatriots.

“You can’t sleep here,” he said. “What’s your name?”

I told you I was tired, I automatically answered “Mishkin Dark-Skin”.

“Says here you’re Sudhendra Vahl and, wait, did you say Mishkin Dark-Skin?”

The four of them fell on me like a landslide, hitting me with their short wooden clubs before dragging me, battered and bruised, to the local lockup. Where I spend a very uncomfortable night before being hauled before the local Imperial magistrate. The charges were ridiculous, to say the least: “Assault on a village Elder”, “Theft of three hundred Drakes”, “Theft of a prize stallion”, “Assuming a false Identity”, “Vagrancy”. Oh, and my personal favourite, “Resisting arrest”.

I might just have talked my way out of the first five charges but that resisting arrest one? That one was the clinching offence: the whole trial took under thirty minutes, I wasn’t given a single chance to refute the charges or make a defence and found myself sentenced to ten years in the Imperial prison at Alabaster.

I’d been in prison for a year when things took a turn for the very strange. During my sentence, I’d been a good girl; following orders, staying out of trouble, that sort of thing. Unlikely though it was, there was a very remote chance I might get a reprieve if I showed that I was a model citizen. So, I bowed and scraped, cleaned out the latrines, washed, cooked, and did all the usual stuff they make you do in jail. In addition, I kept in shape as best as I could. Then, one night, the door to my cell slammed open and I was grabbed and dragged out into the courtyard. A cloaked and hooded figure looked at me from the dark recess of his hood and muttered something to the commandant. Next thing I knew I was being hustled into a coach and driven out of the prison. We stopped but once, and I was made to stand there while my original abductors drove off in the coach and another, plainer coach was brought in. The hooded figure turned to me and said something that sounded like “Somnus” and a sudden blackness descended.

[minque]

I awoke, rested and somewhat refreshed, just a little after the Sixth Hour. Donning my clothes ~ which I’d used as makeshift covers during the night ~ I made my way outside and over to Arielle’s Tradehouse. There I got a meal of wonderfully aromatic conserve, a pat of unsalted Bretonian butter, and a loaf of freshly baked bread. I washed the whole lot down with a tisane made of a local berry called Comberry. As I ate my hearty breakfast, I studied the tax records closely. There were two interesting candidates ~ Arrille himself and somebody named Foryn Gilnith. Both had very high tax bills, although Arrille had paid his on the due date and this Gilnith’s bill was unpaid and overdue.

Having completed my repast, I made my way downstairs where Arrille was serving another customer. “Fair day to you,” I said to the Dunmeri woman who was cleaning the shelves that lined the side of the shop.

“Oh, fair day to you muthsera,” she replied. “Can I help you?” I admitted that I was actually making small talk while I waited for Arrille to finish up with his customer. She didn’t seem too offended, and we quickly fell to chatting. Tolvise, for that was her Given Name, told me many amusing stories of her family, including one about her cousin ~ a notorious drunkard ~ who claimed to have seen a city beneath the waves near the village of Gnaar Mok. Of course, he couldn’t remember where exactly he’d seen this city, and nobody else had seen it. He became the laughing stock of the village and, not long thereafter, moved to Blacklight to escape the ridicule.

Arrille had, by now, finished dealing with his customer, and I spoke to him briefly before showing him the items I’d gathered since I last came in. He was particularly interested in the alchemical ingredients, and we quickly agreed on a price of three hundred and twenty-six Septims for the lot.

Having dealt with that, I made my way upstairs to where Hrisskar Flat-Foot was waiting. He seemed very pleased that I had found Fargoth’s stash, and we retired to an isolated table. He quickly counted out two hundred Septims for himself, then slid the pouch back across to me, “the rest, is yours Ja?”

We got to talking, and he told me that there was a team of Imperial Seekers here on Vvardenfell. A Captain Terris out of Fort Moonmoth near Balmora was leading them, and the captain was looking for good fighters to assist in ridding the province of a number of members of a dark Orcish sect. That was interesting news ~ not because it was something that I wanted to get involved with, but because I knew that I should avoid any lone Orcish Knights.

“Are ye heading towards Suran?” a florid-faced man asked, just prior to introducing himself as Ruflod the Braggart. When I said I had no immediate plans to do so, he said that I must visit “The House of Earthly Delights” if I’m ever there. I’m not sure; it sounds suspiciously like one of those “Houses of Ill-Repute”, if you catch my meaning.

When I got downstairs, Tanden Andralen told me that she knew there was something else she wanted to tell me. It seems that the local militia chased a necromancer out of a hut near the village. He managed to escape, but seems to have left a lot of his stuff behind and nobody, so far, has had the nerve to enter the hut and see what’s there, it occurs to me that a visit there might be useful, before anyone else plucks up the courage to sack the place. Leaving Arielle’s, I wandered out of the town a way until I came upon a doorway into a small series of caves. According to my map, the name of the place was Addamasartus.

Drawing my sword and preparing a spell, I pushed open the door and crept inside ~ if this were anything like the caverns on the mainland, there could be just about anything in here. There turned out to be less of an anything and more of a very annoyed Dunmeri female. I tried to explain that I meant no harm, but she was having none of it and attacked me, forcing me to defend myself. I seem to have forgotten less than I feared, because I was able to hold my own against the dagger-wielding woman with relative ease. The fight reached its gory conclusion when I slipped the blade past her defences and drove it home into her chest. There was gout of blood, almost black in the lamplight, and she collapsed like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

Breathing heavily, I ventured deeper into Addamasartus. There was a whooshing sound as a sphere of eldritch fire went past me, smacking into the wall near my head harmlessly. Even as I spotted the mage, he was preparing to cast again. In a panic, I raised my hands and made the Sigel of Ignis before chanting “ Exuro meus Hostilis”.

I distinctly heard him say, “Bugger, you weren’t supposed to be able to cast sp…” The rest of what he was going to say was drowned out by his screams as the fireball engulfed him, filling the cavern with sooty smoke as it incinerated him in seconds. The shuriken-throwing female further back in the cave met a similar fate. I looked at the Mentor’s ring with renewed respect; the spells had been far more powerful than they should have been and hadn’t drained my reserves as much as they should have. I understood now why the ring was so coveted by every mage between here and the Golden Tower. I resolved to keep very quite about my possession of the ring.

I started exploring the caves by checking out the contents of the crates and barrel on the small wooden platform. Inside, I found several useful scrolls and a small quantity of alchemical ingredients. One of the packs contained a gritty, grey-white crystalline substance that I quickly realised was Moon-Sugar. I returned it to its original location with some despatch: I certainly didn’t want to be caught with any of that in my possession. I also found a crude iron key.

I pressed deeper into the cavern, sparing a cursory glance for the scorched remains of the blade-thrower. There was nothing on her corpse that I could use. A little further back, I found several more crates containing a small amount of coinage, a few more ingredients, a couple of cheaply made weapons, and some more Moon-Sugar. I also found a couple of phials of Skooma, a sort of “liquor” made by dissolving Moon-Sugar in alcohol and then distilling it: known as Khajiiti Beer, it was even more illegal than the raw material it was made from.

A small tunnel curved around deeper into the hillside, and I followed it. Having despatched the rat that blocked my passage, I soon found myself wading in water ~ water that was getting progressively deeper. Not being a brilliant swimmer, I turned back and returned to the cave entrance. The only other thing of interest was a rickety ladder leading up to another platform. Hoping that there were more crates up there, I headed up.

No treasures, but three rather bedraggled Khajiiti slaves were all I found. The key I carried opened the locked door of their rough cell and, rather fortuitously, also opened the Slaver-Bracelets they wore. All three were deliriously happy at their rescue but really shouldn’t have been. I only released them so that they wouldn’t starve now that there were no smugglers in the cave to feed them. Making my way back to the cave entrance, I snuffed out the torch I was carrying and stepped outside into the warm sunshine.

As I left Addamasartus, I spotted a well-dressed Noble and two guards. They seemed to be looking for someone. On the off chance it was me they were looking for, I quickly put the large boulder between me and them as I made my way back into Seyda Neen. As I crossed the unstable little bridge, I noticed the unmistakable golden symbol of Dibella glinting on a tower southeast of town, past the silt-strider. That was good to know.

I'd been doing some thinking about the murder of the tax-gatherer. You see, the problem was it was now an official matter ~ and an official matter with my name attached. I knew exactly what was expected of me, I just wasn't happy about it. That's the big problem with Imperials: they like to get you into impossible-to-get-out-of situations. So, I spoke to several people about the murder of Processus Vitellius, and got pretty much the same reply from everybody. He wasn’t liked (hardly surprising since he was the taxman for a small provincial town) and he wouldn’t be missed. One lady, Darvame Hleran, did suggest that I speak with the lighthouse keeper: Thavere Vedrano. It seems that she and Processus Vitellius spent quite a bit of time together.

Darvame Hleran also mentioned that she didn’t think Vodunius Nuccius was particularly happy on Vvardenfell. I approached him and spoke to him.

“I came here with high hopes,” he admitted. “I wanted a life of adventure: expecting to find riches, fame, and love. Unfortunately I found none of them, and sleeping rough and fighting creatures isn’t the fun I expected it to be. After five years, I have nothing to show for my time here except this…”

“This” turned out to be a silver ring with a small reddish coloured stone. “It makes you run very, very fast,” Vodunius said, “Unfortunately, it also drains your strength as it does so. I’d love to sell the cursed thing, but nobody will buy it.”

“And what would you use the money for?” I asked.

“To get off this damn’ island,” he responded quickly. “I’d go to Ebonheart Port and get a boat to the mainland. Once there I’d head off to Silgrad Tower or Veranis Hall, both places I know well. And it’d only take a hundred Septims.”

“Here,” I said, reaching into my purse, “I’ll buy your ring for one hundred Septims.”

Vodunius’ face lit up like a child’s at Old Life. “You are my saviour,” he gasped. “If you ever get over to Silgrad or Veranis, look me up. I’ll do whatever I can for you.” With that, he blew me a kiss and hurried off towards the silt-strider, presumably to get to the Ebonheart Port place. Silently, I wished him luck, and then made my way up to the lighthouse.

Thavere was, understandably, quite upset when I delivered the news that her lover had been killed. As gently as I could, I questioned her on the circumstances in the village, and who might have had a problem with Processus.

“He wasn’t a bad man,” she sniffled, “despite what people say about him. He was always willing to give people more time to pay what was due, and he never raised his voice. Well, I only ever heard him raise it once, to Foryn Gilnith.”

Well, wasn’t that interesting? I thought as I made my way out of the lighthouse and sat on the wooden dock. Gilnith owed a lot of tax, tax that hadn’t been paid. Recently, Gilnith and Vitellius argued over something ~ my guess would be about the amount of tax Gilnith owed. Then, all of a sudden, Processus Vitellius turns up dead, and in full possession of two hundred Septims. Methinks I should have a quiet word with this fisherman.

Pausing only to take the silver goblet and twenty-five Septims from the hollow stump next to the dock (I’d spotted them while musing on the case), I made an enquiry as to the location of Foryn Gilnith. He was, it turned out, in his hut near the sea.

“Yeah, I killed him,” the wall-eyed and unpleasant fisherman said bluntly. “Him with his fancy clothes and jewellery brought from the money he stole from us hard-workin’ folk. And his cavorting with that strumpet over at the lighthouse.” Here he actually spat on the rush-covered floor. “Bloody disgusting it was. Deserved it he did, right and proper. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

“Your presumption of his guilt doesn’t alter the fact that you killed an Imperial official,” I said, with rather more calm than I felt. “If you felt he was stealing, it should have been reported to the IRIS. Whether or not he deserved to die wasn’t a decision you are empowered to make, and his guilt or otherwise doesn’t alter the fact that you’ve committed a capital crime.”

“You’re another of ‘em aren’t you?” he snarled. “Another one who opens her legs to any Imperial who comes along…” and then he slapped me.

Furious at the insult and the assault, I slammed my hand onto his chest and, with a good deal of relish, hissed, “igneus manus”. His eyes widened as the arcane fire caught hold, and he flailed at me in desperation. Before too long, however, he was in no state to do anything, and he collapsed onto the floor. As his skin started to turn to ash, and his moans became the soft cries of a dying man, I leaned over and whispered, “Never, ever, insult a magic-user unless you want to die in agony”.

It was a lesson he learned well, albeit rather too late, I reflected as his body crumbled to ash and settled into an indefinable heap on the floor. I was still very annoyed and didn’t trust myself to go out amongst the general populace. Besides, he had given me a couple of very hard blows, and I had some spectacular bruises. It seemed strangely fitting that I should spend the night in his hut.

Before I bedded down on his hammock, I quickly searched the hut. Unsurprisingly, there was little on any value ~ although I did find a very nice ring and thirty iron crossbow shafts tucked into a chest along with thirty Septims.